The trip began with a FIGAS flight to Weddell Island before the four-hour boat journey on The Golden Fleece, hugging the Port Stephens coastline until they reached Bird Island. Before long, the island was alive with the noise of dozens of chatty Fur Seals and thousands of nesting seabirds.

Camping amongst the thick tussac grass, they were treated to not only the best of Falkland’s weather, but also daily sightings of 20-30 bird species, as well as South American Fur Seals and Southern Sea Lions. By day three, there was even a lone and unassuming Southern Elephant Seal that decide to spend a few days resting not too far from Dr Catry’s tent!

The group had a successful week counting burrows of Thin-Billed Prions and Wilson’s Storm Petrels, and took measurements of birds in occupied nests. Evidence of the birds leaving and returning to their burrows was also captured using motion and heat sensing camera traps laid out by the team at the beginning of the week.

Making the most of the summer’s daylight hours, the team were also able to record additional information such as counting cliff-side nests of Dolphin Gulls, Brown Skuas, Rock and Imperial Shags, and also collected ticks from various seabird species to aid an ongoing multi-site study.

Special thanks go out to Brian, Monica and Andrew on Weddell Island and Jerome, Dave and Evie on the Golden Fleece for their hospitality and help in making the trip possible.

I started my placement year at SAERI in September 2017 as an assistant to the Gap Project, where my time has been primarily spent managing data and entering the metadata records to the IMS-GIS Database for scientific research undertaken in the islands over the past three decades. It certainly has proved interesting to see the different types of research carried out, from environmental surveys to GPS tagging of seabirds and marine mammals by academic researchers.

On the Water at Port Howard

November saw me escaping office duties for a week to head ‘out West’ to help with the surveying of Commerson’s Dolphins (Cephalorhynchus commersonii) as part of SAERI’s ‘Dolphins of the Kelp’ team. Despite chilly southerly winds most days, we had a successful week on the SMSG rib boat photographing, identifying and cataloguing hundreds of dolphins which included some of this year’s new born calves. The team also successfully retrieved anchored C-Pods that had been recording evidence of passing cetaceans throughout the winter months.

A Helping Hand in the Lab

Besides the office and field work, I was also able to assist SAERI PhD student Tom Busbridge with some of his research in the lab at the Fisheries Department. This included taking body measurements, weights, genetic samples and otoliths from Southern Blue Whiting (Micromesistius australis).

Coming up…

In the New Year I hope to begin collecting data for my undergraduate thesis which will look at microplastics in the Falklands marine environment.

I’m also especially excited to be heading out to Bird Island, a wildlife haven at the very south of West Falkland, to assist with Petrel surveys with researchers Dr Paulo Catry and Dr Ewan Wakefield. Rumour has it that it isn’t the easiest place to land a zodiac, so fingers crossed the weather allows for a smooth landing!

It certainly has been a busy first few months, with more and more opportunities appearing almost weekly. I have very much enjoyed these first few months and hope I’ve proved to be a useful addition to the very welcoming, wonderful SAERI team!

Pop pop pop pop pop. That seems to be the noise that a shattered glacier makes as the tiny pieces of ice float out into the bay that it spills in to. It is a still day and this is the noise filling Royal Bay, the site we’re currently visiting. Like a million thousand year old ice cubes melting in a gin and tonic that is 8km wide.

Royal Bay is our twelfth location that we have visited as part of an ambitious joint project to map the habitats of South Georgia. All being well we have a good twenty locations to go.

We are here to record the variety and extent of animal and botanical land habitats around the frozen interior of the island. We are armed with some simple tools: a white 30cm ruler, a pocket camera, a clip board (importantly, with water proof cover), pencils (also waterproof) and a ‘GPS’ navigation gizmo. (Okay, GPS isn’t altogether simple.)

We have been tramping up and down hills, through waist-high swampy Tussac grass, across fragrant herbfields made of Burnet with its sticky burrs, and gingerly along beaches with perpetually angry Fur Seals and -mostly- placid Elephant Seals.

Several sets of major influences are causing South Georgia’s habitats to change. A changing climate is arguably the most systemic. However, introduced Reindeer used to graze large regions, and Norway rats and house mice, also introduced, have until recently preyed on birds, insects and eaten vegetation.

It is striking how much influence the presence of animals has on habitats here. Burrowing birds from the petrel family can transform a hillside into a highly fertile Tussac habitat with their faeces. So no rats may mean more birds, meaning more fertilisation, meaning recovering habitats.

A Darwin Plus funded project led by SAERI, in partnership with the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Oregon State University, Shallow Marine Survey Group, Falkland Islands Government and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee aims to build an island-wide coastal map that will allow the Government to see how the island is changing and therefore how to best work with that change.

For our small part of the project we are supported by the most excellent MV Pharos, a tough red and white ship with a hard working crew and an awesome galley. We’re lucky enough to be sharing the trip with an inspiring team from the South Georgia Heritage Trust, here to check if rats have finally been removed.

For the next four weeks we will be working our way up the east coast, visiting bay after bay, each one a natural wonder, many with glaciers whose size are hallucinatory and seem to emanate a deep luminous blue. Humpback Whales have started to appear, some doing turns in the air as they leap out of the water.

To say there are penguins here would be an understatement. Some beaches are impossible to find a path through as there are too many feathered parents raising noisy chicks crowding the place out.

It is uplifting to be able to visit and briefly work in a country whose natural heritage is not only in good shape, but is actually getting better and better. An example of visionary management.

Working with GIS and as data manager is exciting, but it becomes even more when the job is taking you to unusual places such as Tristan da Cunha, a small volcanic island in the middle of the Southern Atlantic ocean surrounded only by other two smaller islands, Inaccessible and Nightingale and, further south, Gough.

The project to realise an Information Management System and GIS centre for the South Atlantic UKOTs has reached its final destination and a proper conclusion after three years of life. Getting to Tristan is all but easy thus it took time to arrive, meet the small community and bring QGIS and a flavour of data management in such a remote place.

The QGIS course was not planned in advance but day by day once in Tristan. In fact it was thought that could be more effective to tailor the lessons according to the main needs and existent GIS skills of the users. The majority of the time was spent at the fisheries and electricity and plumbing departments. The directors showed a great interest in receiving a GIS course and their requirement were very specific. They ranged from being able to map lobster biomass per monitoring station, lobster catch (total and average per fishing season) and effort around Tristan, to the network of services, utilities and structures of the settlement of Edinburgh of the seven seas.

A series of maps (geological topographical and aerial) have been georeferenced to provide the students with a reference background. Currently the main need is to find a clear image of the settlement as it will help digitising the electricity, water and sewage networks, the buildings and other utilities such as substations, streetlights, stone water tanks and so on.

Unfortunately on the island internet is very limited and not reliable. Among the whole South Atlantic UKOTs Tristan has the smallest band width, hence it is virtually impossible to download images or connect to google earth like everyone else would do in the other territories. In terms of GIS a poor internet is partly a limitation as getting new plugins, google maps or updates of the software becomes very difficult. The solution is to work with the long term release releases and get large data (such as imagery) saved as offline images and shipped in on DVDs.

In parallel to the GIS course, time was spent in harvesting metadata. The departments involved in the training course provided metadata about their data and RSPB kindly helped in gathering information on environmental data captured throughout the years with the help of the local conservation department. Almost 40 metadata records were collected and will be available on the metadata catalogue online from the end of November.

Finally, few hours were dedicated with officers of the tourist office and advice on QGIS mapping techniques was given to improve the current maps given to the tourists landing at Tristan. Using QGIS will make mapping much easier and quicker than what is now, entirely based on graphic design software.

The GIS course delivered in Tristan focussed on simple and basic tools that could help straightway the GIS users in achieving their requirements. Indeed, more can be done with GIS but the overall idea, after being on the island, is to let the GIS grow a step at a time according to people’ needs.

Learning about projections and coordinate systems, navigation techniques, compass and bearing, and the use a Global Positioning System (GPS) nowadays can be a bit funnier thanks to geocaching, a modern version of the traditional treasure hunt.

In brief, geocaching consists in getting a pair of coordinates, loading them into a GPS and using the device to navigate to the point where a small box, the geocache, has been hidden. The cache is a small waterproof box and generally contains a logbook and the treasure, which usually are tiny items that have a particular meaning for the person who placed them. The people who find the cache are free to take its objects (except the logbook) but they must leave something of similar value.

It was an unexpected but pleasant surprise to find out that in Tristan da Cunha, the remotest inhabited island in the world, a series of caches had been hidden by the local tourist office as part of a commemorative geotrail. The 200 anniversary of the British Garrison in Tristan da Cunha was celebrated with parties and various initiatives and setting up a geotrail was one of these.

The opportunity of being the first to do the geotrail was then seized and seen as the best way to engage the oldest students of Saint Mary’s School to have an open air geography lesson about projections, maps and the use of GPS for navigation and marking spatial objects. Thanks to Anne, the head teacher who authorised the half day out, and the help of Sarah, fisheries officer, the kids in class 5 were taken around the settlement to learn how to use a GPS, how to mark a waypoint, enter coordinates of a point and navigate to it in order to find it. The day before the “hunt”, the six pupils were asked to write on a small piece of paper why they enjoyed living in Tristan. The papers would have placed in each cache as treasure for the next geocachers.

A map of the settlement with a sketch of the geotrail, the coordinates of each cache and a description of the importance of each site in the context of the British garrison period was given to the kids for reference.

The kids of class 5 learned very quickly how to use the GPS in the two hours of cache hunting and navigation. The day before rained heavily, however the muddy and soaked fields did not spoil the day and the amusement of the kids. The hope is to have passed to the kids a new skill which they can well use in Tristan and in any job with conservation, fisheries and public work.

It would have been great to show the kids how to map the points in QGIS. However, there was not enough time to plan for a GIS lesson, which was instead given to some of their parents!

The abstract of the paper is: “Plastic pollution is becoming an increasing issue for wildlife throughout the world. Even remote areas with relatively little human activity are affected. The Falkland Islands are a South Atlantic archipelago with a small human population (<3,000), mostly concentrated in one town, Stanley. One hundred regurgitated pellets from turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) were collected in Stanley in July and August 2015 to investigate the diet and amount of anthropogenic debris (human-made artificial products) ingested. The frequency of occurrence of anthropogenic debris was 58% of pellets for plastic, 25% for glass, 23% for paper, 21% for aluminium, and 3% for fabric. Aside from anthropogenic debris the majority of pellets were made of sheep wool (on average 29% of the volume), feathers (19%) and vegetation (18%). On average, when present, anthropogenic debris corresponded to 16.1% of the mass of each pellet, equivalent to 1.6g. The turkey vultures are known to feed in the open-air rubbish dump near the town. This study highlights that they ingest significant amounts of anthropogenic debris. Further investigations should be undertaken to monitor and identify potential health effects. Other birds also use the dump and may be affected. Even in such remote sparsely-populated islands, pollution may be a significant issue. Rubbish management could be put in place to limit birds from feeding at the dumps. A low human population density may not indicate low pollution impacts on wildlife and the environment and should be investigated further in the Falkland Islands and at other remote islands.”

A piece was published in the local newspaper (the Penguin News) last Friday about the results and is available online.

If you want a copy of the full paper, contact me and I’ll send you the pdf.

———————-Article written by Denise Herrera from the Marine Spatial Planning team, and published in an edited format in the local Falklands’ newspaper Penguin News on 22 April 2016. The project was supervised by Dr. Amélie Augé (SAERI) and Dr. Kate Sherren (Dalhousie University, Canada).————————————————–

Pssshhhh – we know which spots are the best in the Falklands! Late last year the Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) team at SAERI conducted interviews in the local community to identify coastal areas that people value so they can be included in the MSP process for the Falkland Islands. Interviews took place in both camp and Stanley.

Example of a map during interview, later digitised for analyses (dummy map)

A total of 47 islanders and long-term residents were asked to identify the 15 places most important to them around the islands and whether they valued them for their aesthetic “Natural Beauty” value, recreational value, historical value or sense of place, nicknamed: “Makes me feel at home”. This was done using new techniques in ‘Public Participation Geographic Information Systems’, or simply put: drawing and labelling coastlines on a laminated map of the Falklands. Participants were asked to identify the strength of their attachment, using a variety of colourful marker pens. Our participants embraced this fun and interactive activity with such enthusiasm that a whopping total of 745 lines were drawn!

Clear hotspots of values were found around our islands. Surf Bay was a clear favourite in recreational value as well as Bull Point and the Chartres estuary. The Natural Beauty of a place received the most responses with hotspots including Sea Lion Island, the Neck at Saunders, Cape Dolphin, Carcass Island and Bull Point. Of highest historical value was San Carlos, the coast by the Lady Elizabeth wreck, the Mission Station on Keppel Island and the first Settlement on Saunders. What’s more, participants weren’t swayed in their choice by their home settlement meaning a true representation of Cultural Coastal Values was given.

Natural Beauty valued area (highest attachment in red)

Ecosystem Services are the benefits that we gain, directly and indirectly, from the environment. For example a walk on the beach can bring you happiness and well-being, making you healthier and more productive at work. MSP is a coordinated management for the marine environment that includes ecosystem services and environments as a whole. Often seen as land-use planning for the sea, MSP identifies areas of interactions, current or future, between marine uses and economic, ecological and cultural values. With this in mind, the inclusion of Cultural Coastal Values in MSP for the Falkland Islands will aid in better management, maintaining our unique environments, including your favourite spots. After all, who would like a sewage treatment site next to their favourite beach?!

Veronica Frans, from the Marine Spatial Planning project team at SAERI, attended and presented her research at US-IALE 2016 (the International Association for Landscape Ecology). The conference took place from 3-7 April 2016 in Ashville, USA. Veronica presented the results from the work she has been doing in the Falkland Islands since August 2015 on baleen whale historical distribution and sighting numbers, as well as an innovative species distribution modelling (SDM) technique using local knolwedge data to determine suitable habitat for baleen whales around the islands, now and as their numbers recover. The results will inform the MSP process for the islands. See the abstract here.

Veronica giving her presentation at US-IALE on Monday 4 April 2016.

———-Veronica F Frans, Amélie A Augé, Jan O Engler and Hendrik Edelhoff (2016). A whale of a tale: using local knowledge to predict baleen whale distribution around the Falkland Islands. US-IALE 2016, Ashville, North Carolina, USA.——————————–

The modelling work is conducted in collaboration with German scientists with expertise in SDM, Jan Engler (Zoological Researchmuseum Alexander Koenig) and Hendrik Edelhoff (Dept. of Wildlife Sciences,Georg-August-University Göttingen, Göttingen).

The presentation was very well received with some great feedbacks and interesting ideas to complement and improve the research.

Last week, from Tuesday to Thursday, marine stakeholders of the Falkland Islands gathered for a workshop on Marine Spatial Planning (MSP). This workshop was part of the 2-year project funded by Darwin Pus, managed by SAERI. The aim of the project is to initiate the process of MSP for the Islands by preparing data, tools and analyses, and working towards a framework for MSP in the Falkland Islands. The results will inform the Falkland Islands Government and its stakeholders on how to implement MSP and make recommendations on priority zones for management. This workshop was the third and last workshop of the project that will end in July 2016. In December 2015, the MSP team submitted a paper to the Executive Council summarising the benefits that MSP could bring the islands. ExCo has agreed to the production of an MSP Plan, subject to a fine-scale framework. The workshop provided the platform for discussion to define this fine scale framework with local stakeholders and a couple of international experts. An MSP Plan is a strategic coordinated plan for regulating, managing and protecting the marine environment that addresses the multiple, cumulative and potentially conflicting uses of the sea, current and future, and aim to fulfill economic, ecological and social objectives.

Jude and Michael presenting the results of their breakout group.

Workshop participants included representatives from marine industries (fishing, oil, shipping), government departments (EPD, Minerals, Fisheries, Marine and Biosecurity officers), MLAs, Falklands Conservation, Royal Navy, Wildlife Conservation Society, and recreational activities (Yacht Club, diving), SAERI, as well as three international delegates from Scotland, the shetland Islands and Ascension Island.The workshop consisted of brief presentations to show all the maps produced depicting human activities at sea and areas used by wildlife, and of cultural values (check out the MSP webGIS to look at some of the maps), alternated with a series of sessions where participants worked on small exercises on MSP objectives and targets, shipping, conservation, Berkeley Sound management, interconnectivity between marine activities, people’s values and the environment, and MSP format, actors and roles. The participants provided great insights in the priority needs to ensure coordinated sustainable development of the islands’ maritime activities.

The HMS Clyde at sunrise in Port Stanley.

Commander Bill Dawson from the Royal Navy at MPA has been on the MSP project steering committee since its start and he had kindly offered to host one workshop day on board HMS Clyde to illustrate some maritime activities. The workshop participants therefore had the great opportunity to spend a whole day on board last Thursday, partly in the officers’ mess for work sessions and the rest of the time on the deck during a visit in Berkeley Sound where they witnessed ships bunkering in the same area as Sei whales foraging and vessel traffic. The crew were great hosts and made this day very useful and memorable for the workshop.

The workshop was a great success, with engaged and interested participants, and some great outcomes to help design what MSP should look like in the Falkland Islands. Some of the main outcomes in regard to MSP were a clear need for improve shipping management, of vessels visiting the islands but also in particular, transiting through the Falklands’ waters. Of particular importance was the area around the Jason Islands with a shipping route on the west of this archipelago. Identifying other areas vulnerable to shipping risks, as well as for human safety (eg. cruise ship traffic) was also found a priority. MSP was overall seen as a great tool to improve safety at sea and emergency responses, as well as coordinate management of maritime activities, now and for the future. Rachel Shucksmith from the Shetland Islands’ MSP team at the University of Highlands and Islands was an invited speaker at the workshop. She also gave a very informative and exciting public talk on the Tuesday evening, to a packed room, about the Shetlands and how they use MSP to ensure sustainable maritime development there. For more info on the Falklands’ MSP project, check out the MSP webpage.

Rachel Shucksmith from the University of Highlands and Islands giving a public presentation on the Shetland Islands’ marine life and local management in Stanley on 5 April.

Thanks to all the participants for their enthousiasm, and to Sammy for her brilliant logistic assistance and Emma for all the note-taking!

One of the aims of the IMS-GIS data centre is to make open data available to all. The best way to reach multiple users, who may or may not have skills and insight on GIS, is to develop and provide a webGIS service. Through the web, data can be visualised, queried and then downloaded.

In Rome I attended a two day course that was run by Paolo Cavallini (http://www.faunalia.eu/en/), one of the promoters of QGIS. The course was essential to understand how QGIS server runs and how it allows the user to work on a QGIS project and publish it to the web to make it accessible to a wider public.

The course was very good, with 5 participants and taught by Paolo with the help of Andrea Fantini (http://www.tecnostudiambiente.it/). First of all we explored a few plugins that allow publishing data online. Then we moved to the core of the course, which was the installation of QGIS server (it runs better on a Linux server) and the use of Lizmap as web interface. We were given a virtual machine to run the installations during the course, but now that I am back to the Falklands I will be installing QGIS server on the real server at SAERI, with the assistance of Synergy, the local IT Company.

The advantage of using QGIS server is that the webGIS reflects exactly what is in the project, symbology and attribute tables. Hence publishing data online and creating webGIS services is very easy and quick and all the changes and modification can be executed directly from QGIS. By the end of 2015 a webGIS service should be available for Falkland Islands users.

From chaotic but beautiful Rome, I then moved to tranquil and relaxing Nødebo (Denmark) to attend the first QGIS conference for users, developers and educators. Around 150 people gathered for the event, representing and 25 countries.

The setting was ideal, the Skovskolen (Landscape and Forestry College of the University of Copenhagen) provided all the facilities and the organisation was superb thanks to the hard work of Lene Fischer and her team.

I had the chance to present the QGIS training courses and GIS development promoted by the IMS-GIS data centre across the UK Overseas Territories in the South Atlantic. I also had the opportunity to listen to many case studies presented by other users. The second day focussed on workshops and gave everyone the opportunity to have the developers of QGIS tools and plugins as teachers for a day.

What I really appreciated in my two days in Nødebo was feeling at ease and comfortable with the “geo-geeks”. All of them were very approachable, helpful and interested to hear from the users, talk to them and understand the sort of issues we have encountered whilst using the software. I started using QGIS almost 2 years ago and I am extremely happy with the software. It performs very well, but above all it is supported by a wide community, which thrives on and is full of ideas and new developments.

Socialising at the conference was not difficult at all and it would have been great to be able to spend more time with the developers, as I found all of them extremely keen on making QGIS a better product. The strength and potential of open source was tangible, and it is important that the users contribute to improve QGIS by finding bugs, asking for new plugins and highlighting those that still require some polishing. Promoting and sponsoring QGIS is also very important to broaden the community and make the use of QGIS more wide spread.

It was a great experience and I was happy to participate in this first event, which I hope is the first of many. I would like to thank the organisers, the developers that spent time listening to us and the rest of the users and educators that gave examples of the use and application of QGIS.